written on the tablet of your heart
by muppet47
Summary: "Later, years later, what Castle remembers most from that terrible day isn't the day at all." Always post-ep. One-shot.


Always post-ep for erspoke on Twitter, who was a little upset (ha) that Castle ignored Kate's phone call.:)

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written on the tablet of your heart

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"I wasted, wasted love for you. Traded out for something new. It's hard to change the way you lose, if you think you've never won**.**_"_ –Matt Nathanson, _All That We Are_

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Later, years later, what Castle remembers most about that terrible day isn't the accusations, the hurtful words they hurled at each other.

It isn't the panic that rose up, threatening to choke him, making him uncharacteristically incoherent, unable to get the words out right before it was too late.

It isn't even the blinding fear that allowed him to see nothing and everything all at once. All that she was throwing away. All that they could have had, and all that he was about to lose.

That isn't what he remembers the most.

What he remembers, what he will never forget, is how he woke in the middle of the night, that first night, his breath catching, his heart about to explode from his chest.

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"…The loneliest moment in someone's life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly_.__" –_ F. Scott Fitzgerald, _The Great Gatsby_

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"Hey." Kate throws opens the door. For one second she smiles right into his eyes, a brief pause in the frenetic energy that whirls and surrounds her like sparks. Smiles at him like he is something solid in this storm. Castle is pretty sure he's going to throw up, he wants so badly for that to be true.

She's teetering on the edge, about to be snatched away by her darkness. Kate is holding on by her fingertips, and he only wants her to take his hand, to let him help her step back from abyss. His stomach is knotted and there is a burning in his chest, because he has to do this right, say this so she will hear. There are no more chances.

But already he is doing it wrong. Castle feels like he's watching from outside of himself as he trips over his own voice, his syntax stilted, rough. He has to just blurt it out_, you have to stop_ and the smile freezes on her face until it slowly melts into comprehension. Comprehension that he lied, that he kept her from the very thing she wanted most.

"Tell me you're not a part of this."

His heart thumps, hard, and he imagines he can feel the bruising. The cracks.

"It was the only way to keep you safe."

Kate is off, ranting. He is answering, yelling, while inside everything in him is deflating, shrinking from the knowledge that this isn't working.

Castle doesn't expect her to choose him over her mother's case, but he desperately wants her to choose herself. Wants to believe that it will be different this time; that all that work she talked about will have paid off.

That this time she will choose life, her own life, because even if she never loves him back, he can't even begin to imagine a world in which there is no Kate Beckett.

The thought turns the burning behind his eyes into tears waiting to fall, and he doesn't even care that he is begging her.

"… if you care about me at all, just don't do this."

"If I care about you? Castle, you cut a deal for my life like I was some kind of a child. My life. Mine. You don't get to decide."

She's acting like this is about him, about his betrayal, but what Castle hears is that she decided long ago; that the choice was made when her mother was stabbed and Kate was left for dead. He never had a chance.

"If they want a war, I will bring them a war - straight to their doorstep."

Castle feels it all stop. Everything quiets; even the trembling in his hands and the pounding of his heart go flat. The flat calm of the knowledge - the certainty - that he cannot save her.

Kate is too far gone to see that she even has a choice, and everything is quiet and still and hopeless.

All his cards are on the table and he has lost. There is nothing left except…except…

Fury. A quite, contained fury that flares to life and scares him with its intensity, its clarity.

She really doesn't care about him. Or Ryan, or Esposito, or her dad, or even her mother, who probably wanted nothing more than to see her daughter happy. Kate's unattainable quest for justice will always trump everyone and everything else, and Castle doesn't think he's ever seen anything more heartbreakingly selfish in his life.

Kate is going to get herself killed, and she is going to make him watch.

And with that he knows,

"This is, um. This is over." He can't look at her, can't look or her. Can't look in her eyes that are taking up her whole face, round with shock and anger and loss and a terrible, terrible barrier that keeps him out, blinds her to reason. The wall, tall and wide.

"I'm done."

As he walks out his breath is calm and his hands are steady, like a man with nothing left to lose.

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"…I could see nothing but the dark and the rain falling across the light from the windows. So that was it…"  
- Ernest Hemingway, _A Farewell to Arms_

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Castle calms his daughter over the phone, assures her he'll be fine, keeps his voice light and all information regarding Kate to himself. Today is about Alexis and he'll be damned if he'll let Kate's vendetta destroy that too.

He can't believe the act he has put on, how normal he was able to be around his mother, Alexis.

It has worked, but he is worn out, stretched thin, breakable. He has to keep reminding himself that he knows how to do this. He managed to pull away from Kate before while seeing her nearly every day. If he never sees her again he will get over her eventually.

Never mind that after he left her apartment, the stark realization that it might have been the last time he would ever see her made him so sick he had to step into an alley and throw up next to a dumpster, his stomach heaving until he was wrung out, empty. Nothing left.

Now there is an icy knot in the pit of his stomach and he somehow feels slack and brittle at the same time, like a stretched out rubber band. He wonders if he'll ever snap back.

At least it's over. At least he won't have to watch.

So what if he is already counting the days in what seems like an infinite number of days before he doesn't feel broken, raw, scrapped out. Intellectually he knows he won't miss Kate forever _he might_, but right now it feels like some vital part of him has been removed.

Not removed. Frozen. Walled off.

The wall. So this is how Kate built it, brick by brick. He understands now. How tempting it is to cut off the part of you that is dying, to save the whole. Like a tourniquet, to stem the blood loss. Lose the limb to save your life.

His phone rings, startling him, and Castle knows who it is before he checks the display. He hesitates for half a second _she might need him_, before he turns off his phone.

The false hope will kill him.

Kate might need him, but in a twisted, unhealthy way that has nothing to do with want, and suddenly he can't be through with this fast enough.

With a click he pulls up his murder board. Stares at her face, surrounded by the visual representation of months of work. Months of silent, gritty desperation, and a desolate kind of love.

At least he understands her now. If he just ties off the wound tight enough, soon he won't even feel the tingling anymore. Just get the wall a little higher, and he won't even see the hurt.

Castle exhales and drags her file to delete. Shoves another brick into place.

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"I don't have a choice, but I still choose you" - The Civil Wars_ Poison and Wine_

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"I'm so sorry, Castle. I'm so sorry."

He doesn't know what to do with his hands. His eyes are closed and he's paralyzed, barely breathing, his heart suspended in his chest.

He tries. When he opens the door and sees her, he tries. To steel his face and rough his voice. To focus on his anger _because doesn't she know what she is doing to him_ and his resolve is so new. But the minute her mouth touches his, the wall, tentative and nascent, shaky and unfortified, tumbles into dust, and every feeling rushes in from all sides, stunning him. He has to stay still just to absorb the impact.

"I'm so sorry." Kate is whispering it over and over against his cheek, her hands on his face, her lips finding his, and he can't help kissing her back even as he pulls her away.

"What happened?"

Tears are tracking down her cheeks but her eyes are as clear as he's ever seen them.

"He got away and I didn't care." _Oh._

"I almost died…" _Oh, god_.

"…and all I could think about was you. I just want you." _Kate._

She cants toward him, her breath mingling with his. But he can't move, can't breathe, his mind a whirl of love and desire and _pride_, everything in him building, tighter, tighter, until she touches his face and he explodes. Her back hits the door and he is over her, around her, his mouth everywhere: her mouth, her neck, her chest. His hands are against her skin, the buttons of her shirt, frantic as all of his anger and grief and fear alchemize into a torrent of love.

And then everything slows, as Kate presses his hand to her chest, her lips on his suddenly tender, lingering, like they have all the time in the world, and he kisses her back with a sense of awe. Reverence.

Her scar is rough against his fingers, a reminder all he could have lost.

But her heartbeat is strong, and he knows that they are found.

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Later, years later, what Castle remembers most from that terrible day isn't the day at all. It isn't the hurt, the blank despair, the fear.

What he remembers - what stays with him always - is how it felt to wake up in the middle of the night, that first night, love beating hard and fast against his ribs. He remembers the length of Kate stretched out against him, over him, soft and warm, her arm flung across his chest. Her hand clasped in his against the beat of his heart.

What he remembers – what he never forgets – is how she holds his heart.

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Let not love and truth forsake you; bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart. – Proverbs 3:3

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Reviews are very, very wonderful.:)


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